go for C#, if you fear Java.
i don't see any life in the future of VB, ...C# is pushing it out of the
market.
after all, the syntax of C# and Java are not pretty much that different,
thats transfering to java won't hurt...

I would agree with ttakundwa, VB is going to the wayside. The
question to ask yourself is what framework you are wanting to
work in? C# is strictiy tied to .NET, as well as VB, Java is
tied to J2EE. The advantage with Java, is its open platform
design. You can use it with Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris, and
etc. What industry are you looking at and what type of
programming are you looking at?

VB maybe well be going into the wayside, but..there will still be a need for VB programmers to convert VB code to VB.NET. And many small shops may still use VB because its learning curve is easier and more simpler to implement.

They are different. I dont see one necessarily being easier than
another. Java will be more widley used than VB, and VB is used
very little if at all in real development. I've written many VB
apps some very solid apps, but they will never be sold to
anyone. "Real" development is not, to my knowledge done in VB.

If you want to focus on development, of the two, Java is your
choice. If you want to be an IT pro that can develop Java is
still your first choice.

There is nothing to be harder if you have desire to learn so you
can learn anything.Only thing is desire to learn.
If you have learning ability then you should learn java.
For this you can join any training centre.

JAVA is harder to learn. But JAVA, being open-source, offers a lot of flexibility. The IDE is available free of cost.
JAVA is platform Independent (same code for programs in Windows, Mac OS & Linux)...
there are many more advantages.

Visual basic's latest IDE (the Visual Studio 2010), costs around $12000
the programs written on it will run only on Windows..

There are advantages to both platforms, and apparently misinformation about them too. Visual Studio Express is free, and there are lots of other price / feature options too. Also, VB applications can be browser based and thus can run on any platform. Having said that, I would agree that Java is a bit harder to learn than VB.net, but either is a challenge to master. Either way, the fundamental concepts of programming are the base of what you need to learn; the way that you apply those skills within a particular language has to follow that knowledge.

Why not just learn them both? ^^ but here are the tips: just like driving a car, once you master a car with manual transmission you won't get in trouble driving a car with automatic transmission. VB (imho) is a bit automated so I think it's better for you to start with Java or C
________________

When I studied BASIC - my institute in Mumbai India wanted me to learn 4 languages but I wanted to learn only one. I stood 1st in the class of 20 students in 1984. But after that when I tried to write code I could not write a single line. Because in those days The PC being used had a disk drive and a monitor and a tape drive and a printer and I had a Spectrum with a tape recorder and a TV and no printer. Commands were different - Spectrum is just like the Commodore 64 or Atari computer

But after 3 months I started writing a few lines of code and after two years was considered a decent programmer by then I could write 300 lines of working code per day (after two years). Of course my philosophy is different from the methods of Universities and other teaching institutes.

Never, never learn more than one language at a time if you are seriously wanting to become a good programmer. Learn a language and request all recruiters that you will start at the real bottom... say 12 dollars or 15 dollars an hour for 6 months... write code and get into it...

I saw the promos of Will Smith's movie where he had to be an intern at a Financial institute for 1 year free of cost. After two years of living/breathing one language you will not need help from me or anyone else to decide your future.

I guess I am an old Fuddie Duddie with a one track mind - who says learn one language period.

I think I want to agree with rjngh2005. If u learn one language and u get so good in dat language, learning other language wuld be so easy! Don't be a Jack of all trade and master of none!!! I Rest my case.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

Respectfully rjngh I think you are drawing come incorrect conclusions from your experience. I think it was a good idea to focus on one language after a year but I also think that it took some time for your brain to make all the required connections between a very large mass of complex information. So I am not saying you did the wrong thing but that it took more than a year for that vast amount of detail and new ways of thinking to take root.

People learn in different ways and we often don't have choices where we place our focus. By this I mean that when a job needs doing we stick to it until it is done. No options. You can only draw conclusion from the path that was available to you. For example, it is different when you are doing your own research, particularly with academic projects.

I find that intensely focusing on one language for 6 to 8 weeks and then switching to another works really well. I notice that there is a sort of absorption process of some sort that when I return to the first language there is a big boost in understanding and productivity. I am sure the mechanisms are complex and individual. Similar to "intuition", how do you explain knowing new specific facts and relationships without additional studies? Particularly when the two technologies were quite different?

There are not that many languages out there; that and limited time sort of limit the experiment if you follow me.

Is a change is as good a rest? Yes I think so. And of course there are times when nothing but a rest will do. Though these may be related, to return to the point, I am convinced that alternating focus (balanced with rest) does work.

Having said that, I also find it extremely useful to involve two languages at the same time. This could be a comparison of doing the same function in both languages. It could also be a matter of doing one set of functions in the one language, and another set of functions in the other while comparing the two. This works well if you have some goals in mind.

You spent a year of broad general study followed by a year of becoming experienced in a specific language? Works for me, at least I think that works too. You have to specialize at some point anyway and your eventual employment would tend to force that upon you.

I think the process of absorbing new complex material is tricky. The basic learning methodology is probably more important than any of the above.

I often go back and carefully read the table of contents more than once for example. I’ll skim through the major and sub-headings, and then go back and read from start to finish. I’ll bookmark material I don’t get, knowing it will make sense with more context to draw on. Or read it 3 or 4 times until I do get it. I imagine this is less of an issue for some people, more so for others. Effective learning techniques speed all this up but I think there is limit of complexity for most of us and the passage of time has an influence on the process.

Drawing correct conclusions from faulty logic is more or less dumb luck. More interesting is the process here (I feel) of drawing incorrect conclusions from good logic. That is quite easy to do with incomplete information and particularly having too few examples/samples to draw on. To come to some sort of summary here… I don’t think the problem was really that you were asked to examine 3 or 4 languages at once, but that it took two years for thinking in a new paradigm for it to become second nature.

I do not mean to imply that you are anything less than a really smart person, but that the early difficulty you had is part of the process of learning to “think like a computer”. If you were implying that it will never happen at all if you do not become an expert in at least one language, or that you should have a main focus, I would definitely agree with those points.

quote
I do not mean to imply that you are anything less than a really smart
person, but that the early difficulty you had is part of the process of
learning to "think like a computer". If you were implying that it will never
happen at all if you do not become an expert in at least one language, or
that you should have a main focus, I would definitely agree with those
points.

endquote

Let us focus on the above section

I studied in a classroom environment for 3 months on a Language called BASIC
in 1984 at the best institure in Mumbai. I aced the course and was the top
guy in the class.....Somehow my brain really worked and it all made sense
and I wrote code which worked. There was a student in the class and he was
asked to draw a flow chart and my teacher said this should keep you guys
busy for 1 hour and he would grab some lunch and come back. Guess what one
of the students did...after two minutes of the teacher leaving the
class...the student said ....he was done. all of us looked at him and
said....how come let us see what you have done. He had drawn the start
symbol and the end symbol of the flow chart and that was all.....Nothing
else...But I aced the class....but could not write a single line for the
first 3 months of leaving the class...

It was a different machine ....language was the same and it took me some
time to figure out stuff... I even went to the trouble of taking a notebook
and copying the code written for that particular machine the Sinclair
Spectrum Computer and analyzing it and understanding how to write code for
that particular machine.....It took me two weeks to figure out stuff and
then I started writing code.....No one taught me....I asked so many people
but no one taught me.....

My daughter is 20 years old and she is studying at UC Irvine. Her major is
Computer Science and she is going thru the same things that I do not
like....namely studing different languages. But I want her to do that...I do
not want her to follow her father's footsteps....of learning one language
for two years....Not now....First you study at a UC for 4 years and then I
shall ask her to ditch all the languages and then only focus on one language
for two years and make some money while she is doing that....I shall ask her
to take up a job at whatever salary she gets but one language...and that
will be the condition.

She is a good kid and she does not waste her time. She does not spend her
summer breaks watching TV she takes up a job....last summer she worked as a
help desk technician and this summer she is working as an Intern in the
computer department of a big company in Software field.

Yes, that is me....I do agree that there are multiple methods and no one
method is correct for success.

I still feel that your base ' The first language that you learn should be
the only one for two years' but there are other reasons why I want my
daughter to complete her UC education.

Another thought has occured to me....This is something that I have made a
very small sample size....I have met so many people who tried studying
computers for 6 months and later after 5 or more years later they are not
doing anything remotely with computers.

So it would be interesting to hear from other people what your thoughts are
about people who study for 6 or more months in Computers and then after 5
years cannot or will not touch computers.

Also - do You ever think .....why so many people (it is a big number ) who
enter the computer field but the success rate is very low....dropout rate is
very very high ?

And I love to digress

I am now entering the field of FOREX and have been on that path for last 4
months.....I have made small losses and overall my loss is 3000
dollars....but soon I shall make a killing in FOREX

Hopefully the tide will turn in my favor.....I feel it in my bones.

I shall not give up computers untill I have made my first 50K in Forex.

I think your determination and strategy will lead to your ultimate success. My very best wishes with your FOREX efforts. Your additional comments reinforce my suggestion that you know what you are doing.

If I can add to your comments about jumping around in studies. The absolute worst teaching methods I have ever seen were in high school math classes. The administration chose textbooks that when introducing a new math concept would two pages later include exercises in other math concepts completely unrelated to the material being learned. For example, introducing geometry for two or three pages and then having you then work on fractions and subsequently return to the new geometry material. This might also involve working a mixed bag of other concepts.

Now we all might agree that repetition and review are important if young students are to retain what they learn. But at a point where someone is struggling to grasp a new concept it might be a good idea to stay on topic… for a long time. These digressions did not even appear to follow the order that the texts were written in. To add to this, the teachers had their own curriculum and so they themselves taught the material in whatever order that suited them as opposed to the chapter order in the text, further compounding the confusion by making the interruptions become unfamiliar material. Just to add contradiction to this, the students were not allowed work in other parts of the texts while on one topic because they might not stay focused…hmmm… These wonderful texts covered a number of grades, ensuring the confusion and frustration would be a lasting experience.

I think that naturally the effect was to completely confuse and distract the student from the concepts they were attempting to grasp. This tended to greatly increase the frustration of the student. I don’t think this tended encourage a great love of mathematics.

These were the worst texts I have ever seen during a time (the early 2000’s) when we are supposed to have made some advances in learning. The fact that university educated educators chose and used these texts was amazing. I would bet they still use them today. There were some very notable, admirable teachers hidden among this rabble but they were the exception, not the rule. You could attempt to attribute theses problems to some sort of “small town” issues but that would bigoted and incorrect, most of these educators came from large cities. Further analysis of the problem would go off topic. On topic: I have never seen such a good example of a valid educational principle used in such a destructive way.

Regarding your daughter’s studies I think you have touched what is really important. She has your support. She has the support of someone that is knowledgeable of the material, knows how to stay focused and can guide her through the more difficult material when appropriate. Within that framework I think you are right to encourage her to study more than one technology and it would be great if she can perhaps focus on one or two projects that, though part of the curriculum, could receive an ongoing in depth effort.

I agree that jumping around in shallow directionless manner is terrible. My basic point in fact is that both methods of study can work, but are often more related to the nature of the student as much as the method of teaching. In think your comments highlight the point that ANY method of instruction is certain to fail if given poorly by an indifferent instructor.

My original reason for adding to this very old thread was because it dealt with students learning languages. I chose your contribution to the thread because it was worthy of further discussion. You made the effort. I did not with to dismiss it, but to encourage your further input and learn more about where your views are coming from. The internet can be a great resource for students. I think it requires on going input from us IT fossils.

On that basis, I appreciate you continuing to respond and would also appreciate ongoing comment on your daughter’s studies and how your work on FOREX is progressing. Actually, that sort of thing might help your daughter’s future career… who knows. I know nothing about FOREX and I don’t if there will be much in this community with that one should the need arise; I doubt you will need it.

I am not sure if this is hijacking this thread. We are doing all of this on the database careers thread which may also prompt some comment regarding being on topic. I could argue that discussing Java vs VB is very much on topic when considering a database career and a discussion of mathematics (algebra) would be equally on topic when discussing all three.

Regardless, I do feel that these communities go a long way towards addressing the needs of people that require help with their studies.

I don’t know to what degree the drop out rate is due to educational techniques vs. the difficult nature the material. To what degree the computer science is quite different from what a novice would expect computer science to be. I met one guy on-line who used to quote “If it was easy, everyone would do it” in response to the frequently dismissive attitudes that come from people in other sciences. I think it is true that most people can do a really bad job of programming, and few people can do a really good job. However, I think your observations regarding teaching methodology MUST be a factor in drop out. I wonder how much research is done in these areas and how many educators contribute to these sites with their free time.

I have just started a new technique in my FOREX which I am very confident
that it will work.
I need at least one month to be sure that it will work.

However on the topic of studies....Good teachers and Bad Teachers...yes they
affect the students however if you get a batch of students and try to follow
the same batch of students results you will be amazed.

I was sitting at the Introductory lecture at UC Irvine for my daughter and
asked a simple question
How many students enroll every year on an average and how many pass the
answer shocked me
700 students enroll every year and 300 students pass every year.

UC Irvine is a premier teaching Institute with very good teachers - so why
is it that 300 out of 700 pass
and what happens to those 300 students - do they stick to computers after 5
years ?

How many times does it happen that people after 5 years have nothing to do
with their major ?

One of my colleagues who is a helpdesk technician and is good at his work
technically was a Finance Major

I think a study should be made asking people what their major was and what
their current work is
This should be made after 5 years or 10 years of people graduating from UC's
and State Colleges and Community colleges.

Okay, I've scanned through this thread and I still have the same question bouncing around in my head that I did when I read the original post, "What heck does this thread have to do with a Database Career?

The beauty of this thread is that it has nothing to do with a DB career. Should it be moved, why? Sure its not supposed to be hear, its not supposed to live as long as it has, why is it generating a response? Has the original writer responded?

Nice to see your name pop up. Wow, I finally get to disagree with you about a database topic and have a slim hope of being correct. I have two points on that issue. I'll continue your numbering sequence...

4) I think the confusions come in the form that this is not a DBA career question. It really depends on the enterprise scale you are working at... for example, somwhere along the line someone decided that "enterprise" means "large company". That’s debatable, which leads to my point…

I am referring to SMB. I think that a software company with 20 employees still qualifies as a quite small business and would (I sure hope) have a separate database role or three. In the same way, I'm sure many Access product developers separate that role too. However, below a certain staffing level, let's say four developers, the role is dual in terms of coding and database functions.

Somebody posing the question VB (without mention of .Net) or Java might be planning to work both sides of the fence so-to-speak. I am a coder, not a DBA, and I definitely come here when thinking database. Perhaps database-career is stretch though; I’ll partially concede that point.

5) Don’t get me wrong, I strongly support putting everything you possibly can into the database or to at least avoiding using network bandwidth. I think careful consideration is required in this area when using MVC and related design patterns. Where is the best place in the implementation for the controller to execute for instance?

However, I cannot think of a more important issue in writing code than database design and usage. It is of equal importance to a number of other paradigm and environment considerations. Heck, you SQL guys don't even like triggers (translation: individual events), but a lot of work with databases also occurs in code. Gosh, I think the two are sometimes inseparable (please don't hurt me... help... somebody help...) Really though... no kidding... inseparable.

Hah! I've got your attention now! Now it will get interesting. And of course I respectfully look forward to your response while concurrently enjoying high jacking threads.

David, although you make a good point that people may wear more than one hat. I am not going to wear a batter' helmet when I play on the offensive line or a football helmet when standing in the batter's box.

So if you are talking programming you should do it where you can get the most help where the programmers tend to go.

I agree with Ralph, I have been following the thread just in case there is something I can learn from them but seem to be wasting a lot of time with it since it does not concern the topic at hand.

With that said I have just contributed to what has become a nightmare thread.

Given that htis is a _Database_ Careers forum (not a General Development Forum), I would still contend that, although the OP might have gotten _some_ sort of "guidence" regarding the choice (although, if I had to choice between the two, I'd take door number 3 and pick C# ;-), asking the question here is more akin to going into the Mazaratti dealer and asking whether to buy a Ford or a Chevy.

I fully understand about small shops where developers wear many hats, including the "DBA Hat"; however, you should also note that the reference is to "developers" wearing many hats. By the time someone gets the tag "DBA", they have _usually_ pretty much put their "Developer Hat" in storage . . . at least the one(s) that have the subtitle ""VB.Net" or "Java". ;-)

I have begun to learn that Development DBA's are as numerous as the proverbial hen's teeth and, therefore, most non-Development DBA's tend to also be non-non-VB.Net or Java developers. Although, SS2005 and 2008 offer opportunities for using VB.Net for Fucntions and SP's, it is also worth noting that SS2008 gives strong hints (in the form of templates that start your coding) that the preferred language is C#. ;-)

Wow! A blast from the past. As with Ralph, I kept seeing this topic pop in my inbox as well. It did have me very interested, because I have learned Java and VB (before VB.NET came to be) and programmed in both of them. But, I just decided tonight to read the responses. I guess you can imagine how I felt when I realized that this was a thread I responded almost 3 years ago.

When I first responded to the thread in 2007, I was coming from the point of view of having being an IT person, with several hats at one particular job I worked. From 2003-2006, I worked as an computer lab manager for a small liberal arts college for one of the academic divisions. I was THE IT person for that division. SO, not on;y did I managed the lab, I was the help desk/tech support person,technology trainer to the students and faculty in the division (and other divisions) and many other IT duties. What I didn't know was that particular division I worked in was going through a first-time accreditation for a major national accrediting body specific to the division. One of the main requirements of the accreditation is to have a paperless data management system. Well, because I took some database classes while working on my Associate's degree and created some small databases, as well as trying to impress my future supervisor with coming up with a few quick and dirty
database tables during my initial interviews with her, I was taped as the one to create the paperless data management system...aka a database.

Now, the reason I responded to the original posting. During that time I created the database, which was a total of approx. 3 years, I did ALL the work myself. I was the system analyst, the database developer and the DBA. Didn't have much of a choice because I worked in an academic division of 13 professors and instructors. The accreditation project dealt with the core academic program of the division, so that meant working with 4 older female professors where their computer knowledge barely makes it past basic. Because of a time factor (needed a up and running production database within less than 2 years), I developed the database in Access; all of the queries were manually-created SQL queries. Another part of the accreditation in regards to database access, was that the faculty had to be able to access it. Because of time constraints, I went with VB 6.0 to developed the user interface.My actual choice was Java. Because I had just 2 semesters earlier finished my 2-semest
er sequence of Java (B.S. Computer Science student). My actual first choice was Java, as I had 2 semesters earlier finished my 2-sequence Java section (B.S. Computer Science major) and I loved Java. I picked it up very quickly. The coding for the database forms and the actual forms themselves would just look more crisper than and more simplified than in VB. Not that I don't like VB, because I do. But, because of the time constraints, just didn't have the time.

So, because of my experience programming in both VB and Java and observing others who have programmed in both is the basis for my response. I do agree with Ralph that the thread could've been in another group that was more specific to the question. I wonder to where the OP is and what's he doing.